View full sizeThe OregonianThe Burnside Bridgehead development will be lead by Beam Development.

Mayor Sam Adams worked for months to lure Oregon State University to Portland's Burnside Bridgehead, a mostly vacant parcel in the Central Eastside Industrial District that's also home to the Convention Plaza building.

OSU, which runs commercialization programs, turned down the mayor's offer of two years of free rent on 17,000 square feet, said Steve Clark, a vice president for university relations.

"Your financial proposal was most generous," Ed Ray, OSU's president, wrote in a February letter to Adams. "While we are presently interested in expanding Oregon State's commercialization activities with a Portland presence, and while we are actively preparing a strategy for Oregon State's increased engagement in the Portland region, we have determined that at this time, we are not ready to commit to such a large space and financial investment."

Why would Adams help find tenants for Beam Development, the company behind the project?

PDC's deal with Beam called for the agency to loan the developer the $2.3 million it needed to buy the property. A provision of that agreement offered another twist.

"How much Beam will have to repay depends on how many square feet it
leases and how many employees [its] tenants hire," The Oregonian's Jeff Manning wrote in October. "This so-called 'earn-down' formula, a new idea at the PDC, reflects the fact that
job-creation is the agency's top priority."

That means Beam could be off the hook potentially for the entire $2.3 million loan.

Adams, according to correspondence obtained in a public records request, had been persistent in his pursuit of OSU.

"Mayor Adams has encouraged us on more than one occasion to consider being part of a collaborative research presence in renovated space there," Ray wrote in a Dec. 15 email to colleagues.

"I’m pleased to announce the creation of a 'Tech Hub' in
Portland’s Central Eastside," Adams told City Club of Portland on March 2. "This hub -- housed in the soon-to-be
renovated Convention Center Plaza building at the Burnside
Bridgehead -- will be filled with startups from our cluster industries,
like software and clean tech."